Column five

A very British flood: chaos and cream tea

At first light, Martin Powell was to be found watching gallons and gallons of cold, salt water sloshing through the wine bar he manages in the Cornish harbour town of Looe. "It was a bizarre sight," he said, "The water wasn't just dribbling in, it was coming through in waves. The sea was right here in the restaurant. You could almost have surfed on it. I've lived here all my life and this is the worst I've seen it."

To be fair, Powell wasn't just observing the waves. Armed with brushes and mops, he and his sleep-deprived team were sweeping out and soaking up the water, determined to clear the sea from the Lascares wine bar by opening time.

By 10am yesterday, coffees and cream teas were being served to the hardy few who had defied the doom-mongers and ventured out in the worst storm of the winter. "We don't like to disappoint our regulars," said Powell, "When you live near the sea you have to get on with it."

All very British. The whole great storm was a rather British affair. A stranger to the west of England tuning into the excitable rolling news channels and portentous, almost funereal, radio bulletins first thing could have been forgiven for giving a trip to the wine bar a miss.

Partly because of the 24-hour new channels, a decent winter storm is now transformed into a major news event. By dawn yesterday, while Powell was ankle deep at the Lascares (named after a local pirate), reporters were hanging on to their brollies and pier balustrades the length and breadth of the country to bring viewers the latest on the deluge.

Which is not to say, of course, that nothing was happening. It was wild out there. Winds recorded at 82mph in south Wales and Devon were still gusting up to 65mph by the time the storm had reached Kent and Essex. By yesterday afternoon, the Environment Agency had 41 flood warnings and 65 flood watches in place. The whole of the Cornish coast was on alert.

Thousands of homes across south Wales and southern England were left without power and the transport system was in chaos: some roads and rail lines were blocked by fallen trees and hundreds of journeys were delayed or cancelled at airports and ports.

And more awful weather is on the way, the Met Office warned last night. By the end of today a second big storm is due to sweep in, this time causing most damage in northern England, the Midlands and Northern Ireland.

Still, even as they mopped up, the storm-hardened people of Looe were surprised to find that this spot of gloomy weather had prompted such dire warnings, not to mention a meeting of the government's crisis committee, Cobra, attended by Gordon Brown.

The geography of the south coast town means that they are used to flooding. When it rains, water pours from a huge catchment area into the East and West Looe river, and as it reaches the coast it is funnelled into one tiny channel.

Yesterday, the coincidence of very high spring tides and the high winds created a surge that sent water streaming over the harbour wall and into quayside restaurants, shops and homes.

The harbourmaster, Jeff Penhaligon, knew it was going to be a tough day when his wife woke him at 2am to say rainwater was seeping through the roof of their house high above the harbour - and on to her head.

Penhaligon tends to get the blame for the flooding. "People seem to think I can do something about it. I can't," he said. In his office he has a plan of a breakwater from the 1850s. Sadly for Penhaligon, the town still has not got round to building it. Within an hour of the surge the sea was back where it belonged, behind the harbour wall. Once it had abated, the drains could cope again and the water dutifully drained away, leaving a wake of sand and seaweed, stick and pebbles in the main street and squelchy carpets in shops and homes.

"Fortunately, the strong wind dropped just as the tide was at the highest," said Robbie Alberry, the chairman of the local branch of the RNLI and the owner of the Ice Cream Factory on the quay. "If it had been just a little bit more windy when the tide was at the height, we'd have been in real trouble. It could have been a metre higher."

So, with the high tide due again last night and more gales on the way, the people of Looe were spending long hours reinforcing their flood defences.

Some were piling more sandbags in doorways; others hastily nailed flood boards into place across their doors.

Audrey Chadderton, who lives in a converted net storage shed on the harbour, was more worried about the tattiness of her bright yellow wellies than the flood, though the water swept into her home and soaked carpets and antique furniture. "It's one of those things - from time to time, it floods here." But she insisted on showing the Guardian the view from her dry first-floor living room. "It's such a lovely sight with the river and the harbour and boats. It's worth getting a little bit wet, isn't it?"

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